Can refugees revive Europe’s ageing population? | World Economic Forum


If you only look at the economic aspect, large scale immigration makes sense, sort of. As long as you don’t mind the consequences, which will be far reaching, because of cultural differences. You could also consider that a smaller population could be actually an advantage, as it’s more sustainable – but that’s too radical to even consider. Or European governments could introduce policies which actually help young people to get stable jobs, decently paid and actually support families, instead of punishing them, particularly women, when they do have children, by making their lives really difficult – but again, that’s too revolutionary to consider.

As the Swiss, French, Belgian, German, British, etc. experiences show, economic migrants do not come to a country to work, then leave to retire in their home countries – only a small minority leaves after retirement. They come to work, set up or bring along their families and stay. This means that you have to deal with the first generation of workers, but also their descendants for the foreseeable future. Most European migrants have settled satisfactorily, perhaps with some initial frictions, long gone after a few years and certainly absent from the 2nd generation onwards. It seems to be the opposite for extra-European migrants, with the exception of Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians – or, to cut a long list short and call things by name, Muslims don’t seem to integrate – quite the contrary: the 2nd and further generations seem to become more problematic with time, instead. Screw accusations of Islamophobia, asby not identifying problems we leave room for xenophobes and extreme right wingers. Pretending that issues don’t exist and leaving it to the likes of Le Pen to scream anger and hatred against our societies is sticking our head in the sand. We are between religious extremist hatreds: Catholic and Protestant – rare – and Islamist – frequent; and political hatreds: extreme right and left wing. We can only fight back if we tackle issues head on and confront the extremists who want to destroy our civilisation and our way of life.

Source: Can refugees revive Europe’s ageing population? | World Economic Forum

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